Intellectuals are surprised by this because, influenced by the mass media and educational systems of these states, they think along moralistic and not scientific lines. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh, What a Wonderful Unity!
By Uri Avnery
In all its 53 years, Israel has never been like it is now.
The entire Israeli public seems to have become a flock
of parrots.
No matter who is talking - the seller of fallafel or a
professor of history, a taxi driver or Our Political
Correspondent, an army officer or a member of the
Knesset - all of them endlessly repeat the same seven
or eight slogans, in exactly the same words:
"Barak turned every stone on the way to peace."
"He offered Arafat (almost) everything he asked
for. And what did we get in return? War."
"Arafat (the villainous, cheating, lying, corrupt),
instead of accepting the generous offer with both
hands, started a campaign of violence and
terror."
"This proves that the Palestinians never wanted
peace. They want to annihilate the State of Israel
(throw us into the sea)."
" The right of return is a plot to destroy Israel."
"We have no partner for peace."
"The struggle is not about the settlements, but
about Jaffa and Haifa."
"The conflict just doesn't have a solution."
Each of these slogans is wrong and can be easily
disproved by the facts. But that is not the main thing.
The main thing is the total uniformity of the public
discourse in Israel, including the voters of Barak and
Sharon, the members of the Labor and Likud, the
far-right Moledet and the Meretz parties.
This by itself could be the subject of an interesting
scientific research project. How does this happen? We
have no Goebbels-like ministry of propaganda.
Dissidents don't disappear in the Gulag, as in Stalinist
Russia. Intellectuals are nor dragged to labor camps,
as in the Cultural Revolution of Mao. They are not even
compelled to drink castor oil, as in Mussolini's Italy.
So how does it happen? How does an entire people in
a democracy behave as if hypnotized? How do the free
media - the dozens of newspapers, channels and
networks, with the hundreds of commentators and
correspondents, turn themselves into the organs of a
uniform, primitive propaganda? How does such a
system of brain-washing come into being without a
cruel, omnipotent dictator, but as a kind of voluntary
auto-brain-washing?
This is especially odd, because the main message of
this brain-washing is not cheerful and optimistic, but as
pessimistic as can be. It says that there is no chance
for peace, and never was. That the war is eternal. That
"they" will always want to kill us, and that there is
nothing we can do about it. That anyone who thinks
otherwise (if such a person exists) lives on the moon.
Stranger still, this message does cause some
depression, but that is not the only reaction. When the
air escaped from the balloon of peace, one could hear
a vast sigh of relief.
A foreigner will not understand this. We do.
The Oslo agreement, which descended on the public
without any prior preparation, created a shock. I
remember the day it was signed. I was in Jerusalem. In
the Eastern part, there was euphoria. The Palestinians,
together with some Israeli peace activists, drank
champagne in the American Colony hotel, rejoiced
together on the steps of Orient House. In the streets,
bands of Palestinian youngsters were wandering about,
waving the (forbidden) Palestinian flag and nearly
kissing the Israeli border policemen. When I crossed
into West Jerusalem, I found a strange, hesitant,
thoughtful mood, cautiously optimistic. I was invited to a
TV broadcast and found the same mood in the studio.
Since then, for eight years, Israel has been in the grips
of a painful syndrome, called "cognitive dissonance".
This is a situation where incoming new information
collides with old, deeply rooted attitudes.
Every person (and, it seems, an entire people, too) has
a world-view, a fixed pattern of perceptions, a kind of
mental map that directs their thoughts and reactions.
Without such a map, the person (or people) feel lost in
a world of chaos. The map gives them security; they
know where they are and where they are going. When
they are hit by new information that contradicts the
existing pattern, they find themselves in a frightening
situation of uncertainty, insecurity and anxiety. Whoever
is responsible for this becomes the object of hatred and
fury.
For hundreds of years, the Jews have been persecuted
in many countries. Everywhere they encountered
anti-Semitism, suffered from discrimination, became
victims of pogroms, were murdered in the Holocaust.
Even in enlightened countries, almost every Jewish
child absorbed with his mother's milk the belief that the
Goyim hate the Jews, always did and always will. Every
year, on the eve of Passover, in the warm family circle,
millions of Jews repeat the words: "In each generation
they try to destroy us, but God saves us from them."
Zionism was supposed to create a New Jew, but in
practice it only transferred the existing mental pattern to
the new country. Arab opposition to the Zionist
penetration appeared to the Jews as a natural
continuation of the old story of persecution and
pogroms. The existing Jewish pattern was not
shattered, but became even stronger. It created a
feeling of unity, permanency and order. A cheerful song,
beginning with the words "The whole world is against us
/ but we do not care" became a folk dance.
And then Oslo came. Perplexing new perceptions hit
us. The Arabs want peace. Arafat, who only yesterday
was the Arab Hitler, became a partner. The Arabs were
reconciled to our existence. A New Middle East.
Peace, conciliation, mutual respect are just around the
corner.
This picture did not cause happiness. On the contrary. It
caused deep anxiety. It was clear that something was
wrong, The pattern was shaken, and no new one
replaced it. The old map, which described a familiar
landscape, did not show the way anymore. It was
necessary to draw a new map, contradicting all that
was known and doubting all that was thought and felt
until then.
And then, suddenly, a powerful reaction set in. Ehud
Barak, the man of peace, the representative of the left,
killed Oslo and exposed the Arab plot. He proved that
there was no partner. The Arabs want to destroy us.
Thank God, everything returned to what it was before.
What a relief!
After all, in a situation of war and conflict, everyone of
us knows exactly how to behave, what to do. There is
no cause for anxiety. The old map remains true. The
pattern that served us for hundreds of years remains
good for the future.
This causes deep satisfaction. Haven't we said all the
time it's all a big bluff? As Yitzhaq Shamir put it so
succinctly: "The Arabs are the same Arabs, the Jews
are the same Jews and the sea is the same sea."
In this situation, a wonderful national unity is reborn. All
the Jewish parties from left and right can unite. Shimon
Peres can sit in the same government with men like
Ze'evi, Lieberman and Landau, who could give lessons
to Haider and Le-Pen. The media and academia.
almost without exceptions, can join the feast.
Pseudo-leftists of yesterday confess their sins as if they
were in a Soviet meeting of self-criticism. Oh, what a
wonderful unity!
The most repelling exhibition in this orgy is the treason
of the intellectuals. They, who should have drawn the
new map that would lead the people towards the reality
of peace, are betraying their trust. The few, the very few,
who stay true to their mission, are despised and hated.
But on the shoulders of these few the fate of the country
now rests. There is no future for Israel if it goes on
behaving like an armed ghetto. A state is no ghetto, as
the ghetto was no state. In order to exist, the state
needs a new perception of itself and its surroundings,
one that suits the new situation.
And that is, first and foremost, the task of the
intellectuals. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ""The whole world is against us
/ but we do not care" became a folk dance." A perfectly American - or Japanese emperor-worshiping - attitude. "Fuck the world" - therein lies the danger, that they might actually succeed in doing so.